Sunday, November 5, 2017

Have you thought about bringing on another acupuncturist into your practice?

Lately, several Jasmine clients have been expanding their practice by bringing on associate acupuncturists, massage therapists, and receptionists.

These stories brighten up my day because it means that the acupuncture ecosystem is thriving and growing.

And, I'd like to think that Jasmine has had some hand in helping the ecosystem.

Bringing on an associate acupuncturist also poses a huge issue, the need to keep certain aspects about the practice private, like the your patient list.

Your Patient List is Money

Many practice owners tell me that one of their biggest fears when bringing on an associate acupuncturist or massage therapist, is that the employee will take their patient/client list when they leave the practice.

As a practice owner, this is a legitimate fear, I hear stories about this all the time.

The patient list is literally money!

It's another matter if the acupuncturist is just renting a room from you, operating as a separate entity, and finding their own clients. In this case, there's very little cross over and a very clear line of separation.

Not much to worry about.

But as your employee, the clients and patients that you've acquired by spending your own time and money to market and build your brand is the result of your hard work and that patient list belongs to you.

So how do you keep it safe?

Protecting Your Patient List

As, the practice owner, one way to protect yourself is separation of duties.

Separation of duties means that the associate acupuncturist is given a narrowly scoped set of jobs or tasks within the practice and never has access to your patient list.

In the old paper and pencil world, separation of duties was easier because things were physical and you knew when someone took your contact book or patient notes.

However, in the digital world, where your contact list is electronic, your patient list is as easy as the click of a download button.

So putting safe guards in place to protect your data and your patient's data is important in today's digital world.

How Jasmine Helps

Jasmine helps you in several ways. Here are some of the ways and described in more detail below:

Field level security

Object permissions

Disable data export

In Jasmine, a user can be associated with a profile, which allows you to control all the access for that user within the system.

One of the finest level's of access is Field Level Security, which allows you to control the field that the user has access to. For example, if you want to disable access to a patient's email address or phone number, you can.

The next level would be Object Permissions, which allows you to disable access to a complete type of data. An example would be to completely disable access to your invoices or patient list.

In this case, the user would be unable to create, update, delete, and view a specified object.

And finally, the Data Export functionality can be disabled for a particular user, so that she's unable to easily extract information from your Jasmine database.

Are you planning on bringing on a new associate acupuncturist or employee to your practice? Love to hear about it in the comments below!

Minto Tsai
Founder

P.S. If this helped you, please Like, Share, email... all the social network love you can give!

We clarify that covered entities are permitted to send individuals unencrypted emails if they have advised the individual of the risk, and the individual still prefers the unencrypted email… If individuals are notified of the risks and still prefer unencrypted email, the individual has the right to receive protected health information in that way, and covered entities are not responsible for unauthorized access of protected health information while in transmission to the individual based on the individual’s request. Further, covered entities are not responsible for safeguarding information once delivered to the individual.

The email service must have proper safeguards in place for handling HIPAA sensitive information.

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

One of the best things for your acupuncture business is to have repeat patients. Repeat patients is a good metric that you're providing a good product or service, otherwise they wouldn't be coming back!

A nice side effect of having repeat patients is they make your practice more stable and profitable by providing a steady income source.

This is why selling packages are so powerful, but we'll talk about packages another day.

Today, I want to talk about patient reactivation emails.

Why do patient's disappear?

Have you ever asked yourself, why a patient disappeared? Understanding why a patient stays or leaves is important to increasing patient retention and creating the best patient retention strategy.

Some common reasons a patient might have disappeared are:

Life got busy

Moved

Job change

Had a bad experience

Got well

So, your patient disappeared, now what?

When your patient disappears, you can wait and hope they come back or you can be proactive and bring them back.

There are many strategies for patient retention and reactivation. Some include email newsletters, postcards, and phone calls.

Patient reactivation emails are a great low cost way of bring patients back into the practice.

You have been asking patients for email addresses like I told you too, right?

Writing a patient reactivation email

Write an Attention grabbing email subject line. Grab their Interest in the first couple sentences. Create a Desire to come into the practice. And, most importantly, give them an Action to contact the practice.

Some ideas for a patient reactivation email might be:

Remind them of the benefits of routine acupuncture treatments

Offer an incentive to return

Offer your expertise and help to bettering their health

How Jasmine Helps

Jasmine now has a feature to help you with your patient reactivation emails. Jasmine automatically sends your patients reactivation emails every 30, 60, and 360 days to your lapsed patients.

Now you don't have to remember to send your reactivation emails, just let Jasmine do it!

Sunday, May 21, 2017

So much happened that weekend, I'm still processing and reminiscing about it.

The one thing that stands out about the whole experience is how much I enjoy and love serving the wonderful people of this community.

Four years ago, when I attended my first AOMA Southwest Symposium, as an outsider, I was struck and left with the same feelings of community.

Being a vendor this year, reinforced those same feelings.

Thank You, AOMA!

Congratulations to the people at AOMA for running a smooth symposium. As an attendee looking on, the amount of preparation and coordination seems like it takes a herculean effort. And the AOMA crew made it look easy.

Special thanks to Cara Edmonds, the AOMA Symposium Coordinator, who guided me, answered countless questions, and made sure everything went smoothly.

Cara, Will, Minto (Left to Right)

The Branded Clinic App

At the Symposium, Jasmine Software launched The Branded Clinic App. As the name implies, this is a dedicated iPhone & Android mobile app branded for your acupuncture clinic. The app is for your patients to schedule appointments and contact your clinic.

Attn: Acupuncturists. Jasmine Software just launched a new branded mobile app for your clinic at this year's Symposium. Go check out their new app at www.jasminepm.com! #SWSATX
Posted by Southwest Symposium on Sunday, May 7, 2017

And, finally, finally, this being the final Southwest Symposium as part of the free standing AOMA, which going forward will be part of Bastyr University, I'm soo glad Jasmine Software was in attendance!

Minto Tsai

Founder

P.S. If you enjoyed this, please Like, Share, email... all the social network love you can give!

Sunday, March 19, 2017

Are you sick of your patients not showing up for appointments? Wasting your time and money!

We all know the feeling.

You have an appointment in 10 minutes, so you're scrambling and rushing to get everything ready. Counting down the minutes to when the patient arrives.

As the clock ticks closer to the hour, your mind starts coming up with patterns between your interaction with the patient and you get this gut feeling that something was off. Leading you to think she might not show.

The appointment time arrives and you start making excuses for the patient. Maybe she got stuck in traffic or she's about to walk in the door any time now.

Five minutes past the hour and your hopes start waning... Another "No Show" patient... You won't be treating a patient that hour... You won't be making money...

"No Shows" suck!

Could you have prevented this?

I'm going to give you 3 ways to reduce your "No Show" problem.

Commitments

The idea is to give your patients the opportunity to make a commitment to you to show up for the appointment. The commitment doesn't need to be big. A small commitment will do.

“ A standard practice designed to reduce these no-shows involves calling patients the day before to remind them of the appointment. In a study led by my colleague Steve J. Martin and conducted in British medical clinics, such efforts reduced failures by 3.5 percent. But the reminder calls required time and money to deliver and didn't always reach their targets. Compare that to the wisdom of employing a commitment procedure. When making a future appointment after an office visit, we all know what happens. The receptionist writes down the time and date of the next appointment on a card and gives it to patients. If, instead, the patients are asked to fill in the card, that active step gets them more committed to keeping the appointment. When this costless procedure was tried in the British medical clinic study, the subsequent no-show rate dropped by 18 percent. ”

Just by asking the patient to fill out a card caused the no show rate to drop 18 percent! That's fascinating!

Types of Social Proof

Expert social proofExpert social proof is when an industry thought leader endorses your product or service.

An good example is the US Military using acupuncture.

Celebrity social proof

Celebrity social proof is when a celebrity endorses your product or service. This is especially powerful if the endorsement is unpaid.

Kim Kardashian posting a picture of herself getting acupuncture is a good example.

User social proof

User social proof are endorsements from regular users of your product or service. They can be testimonials (text and video), Yelp reviews, and case studies.

Below is an example of a Yelp review. What makes this powerful, is that it's on a 3rd party site and you see a name and face.

"Wisdom of the Crowds" social proof

This type of social proof is the idea that people tend to follow large groups.

If lots of people are buying something, it's got to be good!

Here's an article talking about the rise of acupuncture:

"Wisdom of Your Friends" social proof

"Wisdom of your friends" social proof is the idea that an endorsement from your friends is more trusted than an advertisement or promotion. This is because your friends wouldn't lie to you and don't benefit from the endorsement.

A referral program for customers to invite friends is a great example!

How to use Social Proof at your practice

As you can see, there are many different types of Social Proof. And, many ways you can use this technique to convince patients and customers to choose your service over another.

A few quick ways you can use Social Proof right away at your practice:

Add patient testimonials with pictures to your website and newsletters

Write a blog post or newsletter talking about which celebrity is using acupuncture

Create a referral program for your customers

Automate follow-ups with patients asking for reviews and referrals

Write up a case study for difficult or common patient case you treated successfully

Create a Youtube video of a patient testimonial

As, you can see, there's an endless number of ideas. You just have to put a little thought and creativity into it!

How will you use social proof in your practice? Post a comment below and share with the community!

Minto Tsai

Founder

P.S. If this helped you, please Like, Share, email... all the social network love you can give!

Sunday, February 5, 2017

Imagine, a patient just walked in the door with one of the most difficult problems you've ever faced. You reach deep into your many years of experience and learnings and pull out an obscure rarely used set of needle points. You're ecstatic that those brain cells still exist!

After the hour treatment, your patient gets up feeling great! And that stiff right hand is swinging like he's Muhammad Ali!

The praises start flowing and you get showered with a barrage of "Thank you's!"

But then, you never hear from the patient. Did she get better? Were the praises sincere?

As you might know, most feedback is useless. Most practices will leave it up to chance that a patient sends you the occasional critical and useful feedback that you can actually take action on.

Some of you might have even had that "oh shit" moment where a patient goes on Yelp or Facebook and wrote a critical comment for the world to see.

One of the most powerful systems that any acupuncturist and clinic can implement is a continuous feedback loop.

Continuous Feedback Loop

A continuous feedback loop is, as the name suggests, a proactive system you put in place to elicit comments from patients about you and your services.

It's proactive in that you are actively seeking the advice.

It's a system, meaning that, it's a routine and required step built into your patient lifecycle management as a practitioner and business.

Patient Satisfaction Survey

A patient satisfaction survey is an easy way to implement a continuous feedback loop into your practice.

After every appointment, ask your patients to fill out a quick survey with one or two questions asking about their experience at the practice.

One of the best questions to ask is "How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or family member?"

This question is an NPS score (Net Promoter Score) and it measures the willingness of customers to recommend your product or services.

With this simple question, you can unpack a lot about your patient's experience at your practice.

The Ego

What may be the hardest thing about implementing a continuous feedback loop, is yourself and your ego.

As a society, we rarely ask for critical feedback. Mainly because we don't want to face our own inadequacies or failures. It hurts!

But the opposite hurts even more in the long term, which is never knowing that you're doing something wrong.

Once you're willing to suspend the Ego and start learning from your mistakes, is when you and the practice will improve.

How Jasmine Helps

I'm excited to introduce a new feature in Jasmine that help you and your practice implement a continuous feedback loop and patient satisfaction surveys into your patient lifecycle management flow.

After a patient's appointment, Jasmine will automatically send a patient satisfaction survey to your patient to fill out.

The data and feedback is stored in Jasmine and can be viewed and reported on to improve yourself as a practitioner and business!

Sunday, January 22, 2017

The smart phone has become ingrained into our daily lives. Smart phones are now extensions of ourselves. As, Steve Jobs said, "Computers are bicycles for our minds."

We're all becoming more comfortable in using various apps on the phone to conduct business and now, even track our health.

As the technology of bits and atoms merge, in other words, the electronic and physical worlds come together, we'll be better able to track and plan our lives. Patient health and the delivery of health care will reap huge benefits.

A progressive acupuncture practice will be able to take advantage of technology to provide better health care and grow your practice.

Instant Access

A mobile app would provide your patients with instant access to your clinic. Allowing them the ability to easily schedule appointments without calling or browsing to your website. In addition, they can browse notes and even pay for treatments.

With the myriad of healthcare options, having an app occupy valuable real estate on your patient's screen keeps your clinic at the top of their mind. It becomes an additional marketing channel for your practice.

Direct Patient Communication

Many clinics are already communicating with their patients through text messaging. We can agree or disagree whether this should be happening, the fact is, patients are becoming comfortable with the communication channel.

A mobile app would provide you and your practice a secure, HIPAA compliant way of direct patient communication.

Patient Health Progress

The more data that is available, the better informed you, the practitioner will be of your patients' habits and the effects on their health. In turn, providing you with more information on how the patient should be treated.

What other benefits can you think of? I'd love to hear from you!

And if you are interested in being part of the private invite for the Branded Clinic App, sign up with the link below.